Travel planning and booking website Fareness.com, which enables users to search for the lowest airfares over a wide range of possible travel dates, launched this week.
Users can quickly search for airfare in a variety of manners. They can select a specific city to travel to, or a destination category — like Europe or the beach — as well as a wide range of dates for travel. Users also specify how long they want their trip to be.
A single search results in a calendar displaying the cost of flights on each day of the month, so users can see which day’s flights are the least expensive. That search also yields a map of nearby locations and what it would cost to fly there.
For instance, if a user wanted to fly from New York to London in December for eight days, a search this week showed a low airfare of $697 on multiple dates throughout the month, and a high of $1,271 on Dec. 27.
Clicking on a date of departure highlights the calendar for the length of the trip, and picking that trip by clicking the “select” button brings users to another page. There, they select from a choice of outbound and inbound flights, and then they are offered the chance to book a hotel, as well.
Fareness gets its fare information from a mix of airlines, online travel agents and GDSs, according to the company.
At the moment, travelers can book their flights and hotels at Priceline.com. Fareness CEO and founder Scott Wainner said he hopes to bring airline and hotel bookings in-house in the future.
Wainner came up with the idea for Fareness toward the end of last year based on his personal travels and frustration with performing multiple searches to get a flight for the lowest possible cost.
“It was just always an ordeal where I would set out, and hours and hours later, I’d have a flight booked,” he said. “I always just thought, ‘OK, there has to be something better than this,’ and there never really has been.’”
This past year he worked to get the design and back end of the website in place as well as the user interface.
“It’s obviously great for flexible travelers. If you don’t know where you want to go … it’s amazing for that,” Wainner said. But he said the site holds value for travelers who know where they want to go, when they want to go, “just to be able to bring price and schedule together.”